Wow, it’s hard to know just how impactful this will be, but it sounds like they’ve got something here.
its batteries which it said avoid using metals such as lithium, cobalt, graphite and copper, providing a cost reduction of up to 40% compared to lithium-ion batteries.
Altech said its batteries are completely fire and explosion proof, have a life span of more than 15 years and operate in all but the most extreme conditions.
That’s huge, especially the fire and explosion proof part.
its why their main benefit is cost and safety. for power storage in a standing field or wall density isnt as important compared to for mobile usages (EVs) so sodium based batteries make more sense.
There’s still room in car design for bigger batteries too. Could be used in cheaper electric cars with a less optimal power to weight ratio than LiFePO batteries would yield.
not saying they wont be used of course, just less optimal because the size and characteristics of the battery may be less ideal. for example, while salt ion batteries wear level decreases at a slower rate than Lithium ion based batteries, when salt ion batteries go bad, they suddenly stop working (e.g goes from a wear level of say like 60% to almost immediately zero) which is not the ideal situation to be in
I see a future where an EV will have two batteries each with different chemistries. An example would be to have LFP for the “main” battery which can take a beating but is less dense, and an additional NMC battery which gets used far less frequently, but is available for the less frequent long distance needs. This could also mean that when the LFP is dead from use, it can be replaced independent of the NMC which will have had a fraction of the charge/discharge cycles.
If you meant for a single car, that might be a bit lofty, but for options available it makes sense (ie different trim packages for single model sort of thing).
I see it breaking down as follows: Grocery-getter for an old couple won’t need much capacity. Just enough to get around town over the course of a day of needed and can plug in and fully charge overnight from a wall outlet. The other would be a battery capable of larger distances but needs a little bigger outlet to charge between stops of a long trip.
If you meant for a single car, that might be a bit lofty,
What difficulty do you see with this concept in a single car? This technically exists already as there are multiple charge controllers and BMS systems in EVs shipping today, they are just managing different modules of identical chemistries in the single car.
Not so much difficulty but practicality. I would see it being similar to having 2 gas tanks in a car where one is for a high octane fuel and the other for a low performance fuel like ethanol.
Actually exciting battery tech that isn’t just fluff. They actually built the thing and tested it, rather than it being a theoretical, not-easily-produced thing and it worked.
As others have said, this is for grid-scale and not EVs, but still exceptional progress and very important for energy storage.
As others have said, this is for grid-scale and not EVs, but still exceptional progress and very important for energy storage.
I would argue that grid-scale energy storage is even more important than EV needs today.
Grid scale batteries allow for better security by distributing storage across the network and lets us store renewable energy from peak hours.
Cheap grid storage will be a game changer
And it mitigates the current red herring of the anti-solar groups complaining that solar “generates too much electricity during the day, and not enough at night”.
With an effective and balanced grid storage system across the country, we can recharge the batteries during the day and then use the power at night.
I can only hope that the anti solar groups are arguing in bad faith when they complain about how the sun works.
Either that or: they actually think that pro solar doesn’t understand this fact or one of the two groups doesn’t know how to pair solar with batteries.
I think it’s the second one, because every time I’ve heard the objection about the Sun not working at night it has always been in the form of a gotcha and not in the form of a question like, how do we deal with this issue?
We tend to use between 3kWh (vacation/idle power consumption) and around 8kWh per day. If we switched to electric stove, water heater, and heat pump, and add a hot tub, that’d increase substantially. But if we added solar (on our long Todo list…), the battery in the article (60kWh) would probably be able to handle all our storage needs, and it’d fit in he garage (bonus of it can be placed outside/under a deck!). I live in a major city, but I would absolutely love to effectively be off grid.
Exciting stuff — it seems these are touted as being extremely robust/safe, which is of course important for me if it’s going to be in/near our house. Storage density not a huge concern, but price is somewhat important — let’s hope this sort of thing ticks all the boxes.
Most off the grid people live in rural areas but wouldnt an in city off-grid house be a pretty nice thing? Just seems like a cool concept.
Off power grid maybe, imagine the nightmare of urban well-digging or apartment septic tanks.
Im dont know that much about off-grid stuff(certified city boy moment) but i guess you can do power and septic town in city, idk about water. Maybe rsin collection? But thats not enough water.
Or. Or. And hear me out on this: participate in society.
Lol yes, but isnt off grid a hobby for a lot of people?
Expectation: it doesn’t work well at all
Result: It kinda works?
It sounds like it works really well. The physical size does sound quite large, but I’m not sure how that compares against other types of batteries.
Indeed awesome. Sadly no words about recycling such a battery, though it sounds like it should be fairly recyclable.
Said, let me guess, Altech.
Well how do you know they didn’t double check it themselves to make sure? Checkmate cynics
No it was altech_eft
